


Black Velvet

by Clementive



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Dark Comedy, Double Agents, Dystopia, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Inspired by iZombie (TV), Mad Scientists, Mild Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Romance, Supernatural Elements, Zombie Hunters, Zombie Virus, Zombies, hints of JuuSaku, hints of KibaIno, not the usual zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-12-30 05:12:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18308876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: In the walled-in city of Konoha, a zombie is hiding in a museum's basement from the Special Agent hunting her. When he finally catches her, everything goes wrong and he loses everything. His only option is to trust her and escape into the wilderness where their fight for survival truly begins. NejiTen, hints of KibaIno and JuuSaku.





	1. Dusk

**Author's Note:**

> There is a bit of dark comedy in here, a lot of blood, even more brains, but it’s mostly the love story between a human and a monster. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Special Agent Neji Hyuuga opened the refrigerator, and his hand stiffened, whitened on the door.

 

The motor whirred faintly, brushing the cool air toward him. Its light was almost blinding, ghastly and aggressive. And the black box on the highest shelf taunted him, beyond the arid smell of the cleaning detergent, beyond all the times he had discovered her lair only after she had vacated it. This time, she was enough ahead of him to wrap the box with a silk crimson ribbon.

 

His jaw twitched.

 

Slowly, Neji leaned in to take out the box, knowing full well what was inside.

 

He slammed the door.

 

"Two steps ahead, this one, huh, Agent Hyuuga?"

 

Neji ignored the crime technician as he brushed by him. He walked through the rest of the empty apartment, each surface pristine and gleaming. There was no mirror, but many surfaces of steel and silver distorted his reflection, turning him into a metallic, mechanical shadow. Still holding the box, Neji pushed the door open of the bedroom. It was empty except for a bed in its centre, white sheets creaseless and taut around the mattress. The waxed floor glistened faintly, creaking under his weight, and the pale curtains half-drawn over bleeding dusk.

 

She was deathless, methodical, and she left no trace.

 

"We already did that room, sir!" the technician shouted after him, and brief muffled laughter erupted in the living room.

 

Neji glared down at the box in his hand. With stiff hands, he untied the bow, and opened it, his jaw clenched. He flinched. The ribbon slipped on the floor.

 

Her gloves, black velvet, were arranged neatly inside in a hand open gesture holding a card in place. Her writing was angled, but crisp, red: ‘ _Sorry there’s no alcohol in the fridge to drink your sorrow away! Until we not-meet again! -Your favourite zombie._ ’

 

Even if he had never heard her voice, he imagined her whisper it to him along with all the other messages she had left for him. He imagined her, having just fed, her lips dripping with blood pressed against his ear, her hand on his jugular, crushing it slightly. Ready to kill.

 

‘ _Your favourite zombie_ ’.

 

The zombie, he couldn’t catch.

 

His obsession.

 

* * *

 

"She has made a mistake," Neji whispered to himself, and other words and his name buzzed, echoed around him indistinctly.

 

" _Neji!_ "

 

He followed with his eyes the red strings he had pined to the board. He followed her, the zombie, his prey, across years of chasing. His gaze shifted from pictures to pictures, frames that revealed nothing; apartments devoid of colour, always pristine and glistening, yet empty. A world of silver without mirrors or brains. He read his handwriting next to hers for every message she left him, black next to red.

 

He repeated it like a mantra.

 

No brains.

 

No mirrors.

 

Only the gloves. Black velvet. Taunts, all meant for him.

 

"Oi, dude!" Special Agent Kiba Inuzuka’s voice boomed, and Neji snapped back to reality, blinking rapidly.

 

Kiba shoved him again before letting go. He took a step back, panting heavily. He flattened his tie, his pale face floated out of reach, still unfocused, now turned toward his overcrowded white board.

 

"You’re losing it, I swear..."

 

Neji ran a hand through his hair, vaguely feeling the imprints of his hands on him. He leaned back, his hand rummaging behind him for his jacket. Absently, he knocked over empty cups and rustled through sheets of paper.

 

"Shit! How much coffee have you had?" Kiba alternately pointed at the garbage can and his desk.

 

"Enough to solve it," Neji replied distractedly as he reached over for his jacked buried beneath his file cases.

 

He pulled at the sleeve sharply, and folders and empty cups tumbled over his desk, crashed on the floor. He pulled at his sleeves, unrolling them before putting his jacket on.

 

"Hey!" Kiba grabbed his arm and Neji stared back into his dark eyes, his own gaze feverish, but the rest of him, drawn, tired. "You need to get a grip," he added roughly, but his voice rang, low drenched in worry. "Sometimes, we lose. Sometimes, we catch them. So, I say this will all the love in the world, but you look like shit compared to a zombie."

 

"She has made a mistake," Neji repeated his lips barely moving, as he tightened the tie around his neck.

 

Staggering, he untangled himself Kiba’s grip and stepped across his chaos, wondering faintly about her sense of order and his sense of justice. The Zombie Virus Regulation Office had branded him a genius. He had caught his first zombie at the end of the first zombie outbreak. He had raised through the ranks seamlessly. Because he was a genius. Because he was someone, and for once he belonged. The chase, the hunt had made him _him_. Kiba couldn’t understand.

 

"Where are you going? Didn’t you hear what I said? The director wants to see you... 10 minutes ago."

 

"Hn."

 

Swiftly, Neji walked out of his office. Kiba shouted something after him, but his mind hummed frantically toying with her black velvet gloves, blocking him out. His fingers ran through his hair over and over again. He pressed on the button to call the elevator, steeling himself when the doors slid open.

 

He pressed for the fifth floor and his neck prickled with the heavy gaze of his colleagues on him.

 

The moment the doors opened again, Neji walked down the hallway, other agents nodding at him, and mumbling his name as he approached the director’s office. He turned on the right at the end of the hallway, and pictures of wanted zombies followed him with crimson eyes.

 

Their images surrounded the door of the director’s office, all zombies sentenced to death for proliferating the zombie virus.

 

He readjusted his tie before he knocked on the door.

 

"Enter," a voice bellowed.

 

Neji opened the door and bowed stiffly at the scarred man behind the desk. He sat down on the one of the chairs facing the director’s desk, his face impassive. He ignored the eyeballs, blank crimson irises, floating in the glass recipients displayed around the room. Trophies.

 

"You’re late."

 

"I apologize."

 

Director Danzou Shimura watched Neji with narrowed eyes, his nostrils flared. The skin around his mouth was taut, his wrinkles smoothed, tamed by his anger. Danzou knew Neji’s failures had turned into an obsession. He knew of the white board covered in analyses of her writing and her messages she left him. He knew all of his agents. Just like he knew when it was time to cut them loose.

 

"Have I not been clear about the importance of finding her?" he asked quietly, but his voice had a sharp edge.

 

"Yes, sir."

 

"Then, why isn’t she in our custody?" Danzou violently slid her file across the desk and it spun off, gutted, sheets of paper flying between them.

 

Neji’s knuckles whitened around the armrests. He said nothing.

 

"This is patient 1," Danzou said lowly, breaking the terse silence. "Patient 0 is dead. How are we going to study the virus without her?"

 

"Sir..."

 

"Silence!" he waved him off sharply, his eyes gleaming with anger. "You’ve disappointed me again and again, Hyuuga. Unable to catch this... monster. I think, I’ll have Torune babysit you."

 

"I’ve a lead," Neji cleared his throat, and shifted in his seat, his heart hammering, his tie crushing his windpipe.

 

"Yes?" The director pinched his lips, still glaring at him.

 

"The gloves... They were also found at her first location. They are only available at the gift shops of National museums."

 

Danzou cocked his head to the side, considering him. He wondered if the monster had broken him, infiltrated his thought, the crimson of her eyes cuddling into a sickness of the mind that paralyzed him. Made him useless. Maybe his thirst for acknowledgement and validation had finally been quenched.

 

"This is your last chance, Hyuuga," Danzou said finally, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

 

The director turned away from him, surveying his city through the window. The view scattered by heavy clouds and soft rain, he could barely make out the wall separating the city from the wilderness. The wilderness was where zombies truly belonged, with their kind, starved and white with looming death, tearing at each other for scraps of food. There was no room for monsters in his city, or in the other walled-in cities.

 

Danzou heard Neji stand up and bow, stiff and fearful and desperate. ‘ _Good_ ,’ he thought to himself. ‘ _Despair leads to obedience._ ’

 

"Thank you, sir."

 

The knob turned and Danzou threw one last disgusted look over his shoulder, when he knew it would have the most impact; his eyes, flickering and piercing, and the ones he had ripped out of zombies during the outbreak, dead and useless.

 

"I just want us to be on the same page, Hyuuga... You find her now, or you find a new job."

 

Neji paused as he was about to close the door, and nodded curtly.

 

The door clicked softly behind him.

 

* * *

  

Neji stood below the dome of glass in the museum’s hallway, cast in bright light, his head raised toward the cloudy sky. Tight groups of rich tourists brushed by him, excitedly talking among themselves, numbing echoes of his past. They were the chosen ones of a limited quota of tourists from other walled-in cities; the rich and famous. Those who never needed to worry about getting bitten and turned into a zombie.

 

He tore his gaze from the greyness of the sky.

 

The birds have long deserted his walled-in world. The memories of his family faded below the surface of his mind, sinking deeper and deeper, with each brisk step he took toward the gift shop of the museum.

 

He straightened his jacket, his tie, his hands numb and his mind blank.

 

It was the last museum on his list.

 

His pale gaze swept across the small gift shop, pausing for a second on the black gloves displayed among other souvenirs representing the Regency era. There were two other display stands holding imitations from the Mesopotamia and the roaring twenties exhibits; all eras before monsters walked the earth.

 

"I wonder, if you could help me?" Neji asked the young clerk behind the counter.

 

"Yes," the clerk squeaked, and pushed her cellphone farther away from her.

 

Her beady eyes widened as she took in the badge he was holding up in front of her. She touched her hair in a nervous tic. The game she was playing beeped softly between them until the screen of her phone turned black. She gave him an embarrassed smile, and he pinched his lips, impatience seething inside him.

 

"How many of your gloves do you sell per day?" Jerkily, Neji pointed behind him at the black gloves.

 

Then, he took out a pen and his notepad.

 

"The Regency gloves?" she blinked, her hand reached again for her mousy hair, smoothing it back. "Oh, not much, sir... Oh, did a zombie used them... For the silver, is that it?" she gulped and leaned farther over the counter, dropping her voice to a mere whisper: "or is it the steel, they can’t touch? I can never remember between werewolves and zombies..."

 

"I will ask the questions, Miss..." he glanced at her name tag. "Miss Matsuri."

 

"Right," she flushed and straightened her back abruptly. "I can give you the records of all past purchases for them, but we are a small museum. I’m not sure..."

 

"I’ll also need the security cameras," Neji cut her off, nodding toward the camera in one of the corners of the shop.

 

"Of course, I’ll just ask my boss."

 

"Make it quick."

 

Matsuri gave him a shy smile and walked swiftly to the back store, brushing aside the curtains that separated it from the main store. He tapped his pen impatiently on the empty page of his notepad, glancing around at the tourists who were watching him with ashen expressions, curiosity bleeding on raw fear. Most of them exited the shop pulling their crying and screaming children by the hand. They knew his presence meant there was a zombie in the vicinity.

 

Neji turned back toward his notepad, still empty, the hushed voices around him thinning. He could now hear Matsuri’s muffled voice, young and high-pitched and the one of her older boss who hissed impatiently. Lack of cooperation with the Office could lead to deportation to the wilderness. Moments later, the curtains moved, and Matsuri bounced back toward him, her arms filled with sheets of paper and one USB-key.

 

"We don’t keep footage past four months. Otherwise, everything is here."

 

She bit her lip watching him as he leafed through the list with a frown.

 

"Can I ask-"

 

"No," Neji interrupted flatly and pointed at a line with his pen, "No name here?"

 

"It means, that she paid cash."

 

"She?" he looked up at her, and Matsuri nodded, agitated, her lips whitening.

 

"Oh, it’s just the lady downstairs... She buys them once in a while. We call her the lady, because she has this air of... you know? Nobility. We first offered her the gloves as a joke."

 

"The lady downstairs?" he repeated, his heart exploding in his chest with each second ticking past.

 

"She authenticates weapons. She’s quite a genius about weapons. She has this condition... this skin condition."

 

"So, she wears gloves," Neji finished for her, and he almost laughed, dryly, coldly.

 

Of course, she would hide in plain sight.

 

Of course, she would be surrounded by steel, a metal zombies couldn’t touch.

 

"Yes, sir," Matsuri replied quickly, the tip of her ears reddening. "She showed us once... her hands were red, irritated, like eczema."

 

"What’s her name?" Neji asked briskly, and he started writing on his notepad.

 

"But, sir, she works with weapons. You can’t possibly think..."

 

"We want to remove her from the suspect list as fast as possible, don’t we?" Neji tried to sound pleasant, but his voice sliced through her, booming, icy and harsh.

 

"You’ve never had an employee who disappeared," he added with a slight smile, when Matsuri remained frozen with tears in her eyes.

 

"No, never," Matsuri said softly shaking her head.

 

"Yes, so, no harm done. We are just exploring every lead," Neji cleared his throat. "Her name?"

 

Her hand clawed nervously at the necklace hanging around her neck, her face pale and closed. Steel. After the zombie outbreak, the ones who were still humans started wearing steel to protect themselves. Then, it was known as the only thing that could repel a zombie. Children of survivors seemed to have carried on the practice, Neji mused. Matsuri was probably too young to remember the outbreak.

 

"Zhang," she whispered. "Tenten Zhang."

 

* * *

 

Tenten Zhang was dressed entirely in black, an indistinct shadow in the humid basement. She occupied it alone, the other rooms all used as storage.

 

Neji watched her from the entrance of her office, his knuckles centimetres from the opened door. She was bent over a steel table, her dark hair pulled back with hair sticks in a bun atop her head. She worked slowly, carefully, almost lovingly, her gloved hands rolling brushes or other tools toward her. Every so often, she readjusted the light over the weapon she was restoring.

 

"I’m sorry, this part of the museum is closed to the public," she said lightly, never pausing in her work. "You should go back upstairs and find your guide."

 

Neji cleared his throat, and stepped in her office.

 

"Special Agent Neji Hyuuga," he said gruffly, and her shoulders tensed briefly.

 

Calmly, Tenten turned toward him, pressing the tool she was holding on the table. He moved his jacket aside to show her the badge on his belt, and her dark eyes shifted to it, then rest on his gun. Neji watched her carefully, but she gave nothing away, her face composed, her movement measured as she stood up to greet him.

 

He understood what Matsuri had meant, an air of nobility. Effortlessly graceful, but with a calmness that could only hide careless violence.

 

"How can I help you, mister Hyuuga?"

 

They faced each other, and even if she was serene and smiling, he was certain their expression mirrored each other.

 

Recognition. They recognized each other.

 

"You’re Tenten Zhang," he breathed out.

 

She nodded, and her earrings clanked faintly.

 

As he stepped deeper into the room, he saw mummies and sarcophagi pressed against the walls, her desk of glass neat and glistening, empty, farther away. The rest was steel, in the centre of the room. Weapons and steel, that gave her face a palish and savage glow.

 

His hand rest on his gun, and her smile widened, crooked, purplish-red.

 

"I need your help authenticating something," he said, his eyes never leaving her.

 

Tenten leaned back against the table behind her, her eyebrows raised.

 

"Well, Mister Hyuuga," she drawled out his name, her smile unwavering as she clasped her hands in front of her, "I’m a curator. I don’t authenticate anything the museum doesn’t pay me to."

 

"Even this?"

 

Neji reached past her and dropped a bagged weapon on her table. She didn’t move, sensing his discomfort in their proximity. His fingers grazed the clasp of his holster. No heat came off her.

 

"It was used in the first outbreak to kill zombies," he said softly, and he knew she knew he could see her colour contact lenses hiding the redness of her eyes.

 

Neji stepped away from her.

 

"Then, it has been authenticated," Tenten shrugged, the tip of her fingers gripping the bag and spinning it around so the handle of the mace was facing her. "Why would you need me?" Her eyes gleamed with amusement, and he swallowed hard.

 

She was supposed to fight back. The hunt meant nothing otherwise, he thought frantically.

 

Neji took out his gun from his holster, his finger now testing the resistance of the security lock.

 

"Take off your gloves and touch it," he ordered.

 

"Ah, yes, that stupid rule..." Tenten nodded to herself, and his jaw clenched, his lips thinning.

 

The hunt meant nothing, nothing, _nothing,_ if she didn’t fight. _He_ was nothing if he couldn’t fight.

 

"A member of the Agency can ask at all times to verify death status," he recited coldly. "Your colleague tells me you’ve been behaving suspiciously," he added trying to get a rise out of her.

 

"How suspicious was I?" Tenten smirked.

 

"The gloves..." He waved his gun towards them.

 

"I have a skin condition."

 

"Take them off."

 

Tenten sighed and shrugged, gazing around her at the spotless bookshelves with a resigned expression before finding his stare again. She tore open the plastic bag. The mace was small, compact, crudely made. Almost prehistoric-like. No one had been ready for the zombie outbreak, and most bullets were made of lead and gilding metal. Most bullets couldn’t kill zombies.

 

But now, they knew about the steel. They charged their weapons with it.

 

The time of crude terrified prehistoric-like men hunting zombies was over; everyone was prepared now.

 

"You know..." Tenten said slowly peeling off the first glove. "Sometimes, you shoot in the darkness for something out of reach. I mean, if you are hunting someone. Hypothetically, of course. If you’re a good hunter, you take risks," she angled her shoulder, half a shrug, and the first glove fell on the table, and his heart pounded louder. "And other times..." Swiftly, her hand gripped the handle of the mace and flung it at Neji’s head.

 

His gun misfired.

 

His head bounced, whipped away from her, a wet echo, as his body dropped to the floor. The gun spun away from him.

 

"Other times, you crack some skulls open," Tenten finished dryly, glancing over her shoulder at the bullet embed in the stone wall above her head, deep cracks sneaking away from it.

 

She groaned.

 

Her skin seared as she watched the blood soaked him, swallowing him whole, crimson and mutely glistening. She forced her hand open with her other hand, hissing, and the mace clanked, dug into the floor where it fell. Thin layers of her flesh were still attached to its handle. She held her palm up to her face, wincing.

 

"They had just healed, fuck."

 

With inhuman speed, she crouched down and sat on her heels. She looked at his face paling, shrinking, blending into the neon light. With her still gloved hand, she prodded at the gash on his temple.

 

"Now, what am I going to do with you?" Tenten hummed to herself and licked her lips, smearing her lipstick around her mouth.

 

Her stomach growled, a blunt pain that shook her whole.

 

She was hungry.

 


	2. Midnight Part I

Her high heels stuck on the drying blood as Tenten dragged herself, half-delirious, and stumbled and stumbled, more dead than alive, to the backroom where she kept her stash of brains.

Her still gloved hand slipped, quivering, because it could roughly turn the knob and throw the door open. 

Heavily, she staggered toward the mirror. It was cracked in its centre, the reflection of her lips divided by thick lines of gleaming glass. Tenten leaned in closer to her reflection, her hand faintly shaking as she reapplied her lipstick. She averted her gaze from the blue veins now noticeable across her pale face. Her eyes gleamed, red, underneath the dark brown of her contact lenses, her pupils dilated with need and hunger. Her other hand gripped more forcibly the edge of the sink, her palm still burning from touching steel.

She was still hungry, barely herself, barely aware of anything else than his brains and this consuming craving inside her.

How could she had let it escalated to a gunshot, a cracked skull?

Tenten reached back, her hand clumsy, fumbling across the counter for her last bottle. She knocked over empty bottles, and they fell back and rolled at her feet. She kicked at them, desperate, her mind breaking apart. 

"Come on, come one," she mumbled until her hand closed on the last full bottle.

Breathing heavily through her nose, Tenten took a sip of the mixture of brains and strawberry. She gasped and closed her eyes in relief. It tasted sweet and thick, but a primitive, voracious part of her yearned for the fresh brains of the special agent still lying on the floor in the main room.

She had forgotten how good fresh brains smelled.

She had forgotten how hunger could overwhelm her, avidly crawled through her, possessed her.

Tenten forced another sip down, her throat bulging, half closing, refusing the mixture. His brains would taste better. She dry-heaved pressing a clammy hand against the mirror. The sink danced, fuzzy, muddled, in front of her. Even if she was dead, her heart almost silent in her chest, she was still consumed by a rush of adrenaline, the urge to kill dampened, but always there, lurking.

And she felt disorganized, her fingers rubbing her temples, her movements still stiff and clumsy. Undead. Her lipstick once more smudged.

She swallowed hard another sip, and another, and another, until she calmed down. 

The black velvet gloves had been a mistake.

Slowly, Tenten walked back in the main room, leaning against the wall. He still laid motionless near her examination table. Her hand shook around her bottle, as she stared as his pallor, surrounded by stiffening red. His black hair had slipped out of his hair-tie when he had fallen. His gun had spun away from him after she had hit him.

"What a mess," Tenten muttered, her gaze shifting to the hole the bullet had made on the wall where her desk was.

She had been careless.

She was lucky that her office was six feet under and tourists still swarmed the museum. 

She was lucky no one had heard the gunshot.

Ignoring the pain, Tenten put her other glove back on. She forced her body to move normally, smooth and alive. He smelled exquisite and his brains... She could peel off more flesh around his wound, then, one nail to break the skull...

Tenten gulped with difficulty, staggering back, once more unstable on her heels. Shaking, she threw her head back and swallowed more of the flavourful liquified brains. Her mind was sliced, divided from the moment she was changed, survival and hunger, all instinct, and only partly rational. As her mind cleared, she knew they would come for her soon. She needed to act right now.

Tenten carefully stepped over him and bent down over her examination table. She rummaged across her tools until her hand found her satchel. She stopped breathing as she turned back toward the unconscious agent. 

She dropped her bag next to his head, her tools clanging inside.

"Alright, let’s do this," she straightened her back, her eyes on the gash on his forehead.

She needed to make him disappear.

 

* * *

  

As Tenten rose above ground, the view across the windows of the elevator flashed before her; floors of art pieces, and weapons she had authenticated across the years. Restlessly, she closed her eyes, her gloved hand curling into a fist on the sarcophagus. She knocked on the wood lightly, her heart severing, caving in a heavy gulf.

A part of her wanted to stay despite the danger, the same part of her which had become alive with the museum.

She had never imagined she would feel this heartache for a second time; change cities, change names, and bury her hopes and dreams. 

Tenten had rebuilt her life, lie by lie, weapon by weapon. When she first came to the museum, she had been half-dead and seething with monstrous hatred. She had had nothing but a satchel full of scalpels and needles, the surgical instruments she couldn’t touch anymore. There had been no hiring regulations then, no walled-in cities. The virus had been contained; there had been only Juugo and her.

Her face darkened, and she stiffened, her sadness throbbing painfully, boiling until she was venom and anger. _Juugo_... She pressed her hand above her left breast, her heartbeat almost extinct, half-dead. She couldn’t feel her bulging uneven scars through her clothes, but she felt them ignite as they always did when she thought of Juugo.

Tenten pushed those thoughts away. They wouldn’t help her survive now.

The elevator wheezed, slowing down on the main floor before chiming delicately as the doors slid open.

Tenten rolled the sarcophagus out of the elevator, her heels resonating solemnly in the now empty hall.

"Miss Wang!"

Tenten slowed down and turned back toward the meek young girl jogging toward her. She composed her face, unperturbed by Mrs Terumi’s weary glance and Matsuri’s hesitation. The grid over the entrance of the gift shop was half-lowered, glistering steel under the golden taint of the setting sun.

"Oh, Matsuri! How do you do?" Tenten asked lightly with the posh accent she knew amused her and her other coworkers.

"Did the man..." Matsuri bit her below lip glancing at her furtively as she tried to focus on the sarcophagus. "The special agent..." she gulped, her voice cracking into a whisper. "Did he speak with you?"

"Oh yes," Tenten laughed heartily, and Matsuri’s shoulders relaxed. She finally looked up at her, the corners of her mouth lifting into a small embarrassed smile. "He had me touched steel in front of him... I was restoring a viking hatchet, can you imagine?"

Tenten pretended not to notice how her eyes were rimmed with red, puffy, as if Matsuri had cried. ‘ _I’ll miss you, kid,_ ’ she thought fiercely, but betrayed nothing. She began to walk again slowly, rolling the sarcophagus next to her and Matsuri fell into step on her other side.

"Oh, I’m glad... He looked intense," Matsuri said after a moment, and she clutched her purse to her side.

"Well, you’re still a child, so I’ll say it for you: This man had a stick up his ass."

"Miss Wang!" Matsuri giggled, her cheeks flushed.

It tugged at her heartstring that she would never see her again. This part of her life was over, Tenten knew. She could never come back, not here, not to this city. Glancing over Matsuri’s head, she nodded formally at Mrs Terumi who walked back into her shop. She also looked relieved. And the breath everyone had been holding puffed, the magic broken, and the museum once more alive. Like nothing had changed.

"Well, good night, kid! Don’t you miss your train or you’ll be stuck outside after curfew. I’ll see you Wednesday."

"Good night, Miss Wang!" Matsuri hurried by the main entrance before Chouza Akimichi, the security guard, could lock the doors. 

"Ah, Mr Akimichi," Tenten called, and he turned toward her with good humour. "Could you please help me with this? I meant to show it to my students tomorrow."

"Sure thing!" Mr Akimichi beamed at her, his round face always jolly and open. "Is this an imitation or are you stealing from the museum, Miss Wang?" He chuckled to himself, as he advanced toward her. 

"If I were to steal it would be a gladiator sword or something else from the Roman exhibit, I assure you Mr Akimichi." 

He laughed at her answer, and she returned a bright smile.

Mr Akimichi rolled the sarcophagus ahead of her, chattering about his family as he always did. Tenten smiled until her face ached. And she smiled wider and wider, and she nodded every time he turned back toward her. The simplest act now killed her. Her mind reeled, her fist closed around a weapon inside her satchel.

‘ _Just in case_ ,’ she swore to herself readjusting her grip on the mace.

Mr Akimichi unlocked the door to the parking lot for them. Her truck was one of the few cars still there. As they approached it, she unlocked the doors and opened the booth. She stood behind him, her face stiffening as he gripped the sarcophagus.

He tried to lift it, and he puffed, his face turning bright red.

"What have you got in here, Miss Wang? A grown man?"

"Oh no, Mr Akimichi, just a mummy," she answered lightly, and her eyes followed his gestures intently.

With some difficulty, he managed to slid it in her booth. Winded, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

"Thank you so much, Mr Akimichi. I’ll bring you sweets after class tomorrow for your help."

"Ah! Well, Miss Wang, don’t trouble yourself..." he said with difficulty, still panting.

"I insist, sir!" Tenten smiled, radiant, in control once more, and her knuckles brushed against the frayed wood of the sarcophagus before she closed her booth with a ferocious satisfaction.

"I can’t say no, then. Goodnight, Miss Wang!"

"Thank you again, Mr Akimichi, and good night!"

Mr Akimichi whistled as he walked back toward the door of the parking lot. He waved to her one last time before disappearing back into the hall.

Tenten released the weapon in her satchel, her smile slipping. 

She turned back to her truck, barred windows and thick dented bars of steel covering the doors and bumper and rear. She lowered her sunglasses over her eyes, her gloved hand opening the door a moment later. After she slid on the driver’s seat and closed the door, she checked her makeup in her rearview mirror.

She looked like a human armed against monsters.

Smirking to herself, Tenten started the engine.

 

* * *

 

Neji was once more the little boy sitting in the stairs of the bunker.

Somehow he knew it was all wrong; the dusty rails of the stairs had been taller, cracked gnarled wood that offered little protection. Below, there were three different floors, cans of food sprawled across the walls. Maybe there had been a fourth.

He couldn’t remember.

He couldn’t focus.

His parents’ voices sounded like buzzing, raising from the lowest floor. Neji leaned his head against the rail, his mind sluggish.

It was all wrong, he wanted to scream.

He had made it out.

He couldn’t be back there. 

"Neji!" his mother’s shrill rose from below.

Gasping, Neji looked down and all he could see was his skin, lit by moonlight, dotted by blood. The rest of the bunker had been abruptly swallowed by thick spinning darkness. 

He froze, his head rolling back, heavy, too heavy. Rolling back and back. Lead. Steel. Black velvet. He struggled; he would rather die than go back. Then, something gripped him, inhumane hands, distorted shadows standing above him. Sand fell across his shoulders, down his neck, and his mouth tore into a muted scream. The door of the bunker was open.

He smelled his own sour sweat, panic rising.

He fought, his pain pressing against him, locking him in that memory; the boy sitting on the stairs.

The hands gripped him again, and he could barely shield his eyes from the blinding moon.

"Nejiiiii!" his mother yelled again and her voice echoed from everywhere, unbearable, breakable. 

The world spun, up was down, down was up, and he fell abruptly. He didn’t raise above ground. 

The sound drilled through his head, and he gasped, empty, his parents’ voices buzzing turning into clicking. Almost mechanical, grating laughter.

Neji opened his eyes, wincing, chocking on his own saliva. He could now hear the machines oppressing him, hissing words back him. Words he never wanted to hear again. Then, there was his name again and again, a woman’s violet lips blinking above him. 

"You," Neji panted, drenched in cold sweat, and he grimaced, his head splitting open again. 

"Hello, sunshine," Tenten said lightly and drank loudly from a straw, leaning over the side of the sarcophagus. "Has been a while. I thought I had lost you. How’s the head?" 

Neji tried to move, but nothing obeyed him. His head pounded with each of his intakes. He felt nauseous, dizzy, the flesh of his forehead pinched and raw. 

"Let me out," he rasped. 

"Are you under the impression that we have a safe word?" Tenten smirked, and he watched with mounting horror, her hand approach his face, naked, contagious nails, now feeling his neck. Her face was turned away from him, focusing on something beyond him. "You made your bed when you started hunting me, now... well, now, you lie in my sarcophagus." 

The pressure of her hand disappeared, and he wondered faintly, part agony, part panic, if he would instantly know if he had turned into a zombie. She reached across him and brought the straw back to her lips. 

"If we should fight..." he didn’t know what he meant, his thoughts spun. "We should do it without..." 

"Without what? This?" Tenten knocked on the wood, and he winced again, at the abrupt echo, his eyes drifting over her blurry shape. "Would you say this to Akhenaten himself? Or any other Pharaoh?" Her questions raised like vapour, distorted, from far away. 

"So, bad news, you have a tiny concussion." 

Neji grumbled, his eyes shifting around him to find the source of the mechanical sound. Tall machines towered over them, half draped in shadows and the rusty gold of the setting sun. Wildly, he wondered if the curfew had passed. The slowly moving conveyor belt hypnotized him. 

Then, Neji sucked in a breath, rearing back as far as the sarcophagus and his ties would allow. He felt the needle in the crook of his immobilized elbow without seeing it. 

"What-" he snapped, and shook his head, pinching his lips. Fighting, fighting. He could fight now. 

"You need to learn how to relax when someone drugs you," Tenten said in a sing-song voice. 

Neji gasped. He blinked rapidly, his head feeling lighter, his mind sharper. 

"Ahh, you’re staring to notice your surrounding, huh, sleepy head? You’re in a glove factory. Gloveeee. Get it?" 

Tenten took another sip from a bottle, her eyes sparkling with amusement. She released the straw with a loud smack of the lips and a feigned satisfied sigh. His insides contracted uneasily, nausea rising poignantly when he realized the mixture was too thick, too dense to merely be a smoothie. 

"You’re eating people," he muttered through blanched lips.

"Well, your sutures can only do so much to stop me," Tenten tapped lightly on his forehead, and Neji felt nothing, his skin totally numbed. "Ohhh, but don’t worry about the humans I eat, they live in this big factory in inhumane conditions, all lined up to grow big and strong... Oh right, that’s what your kind do with animals." 

She smiled brightly, ferociously. 

"I’m vegetarian," Neji grumbled, and he shifted carefully testing the strength of the ropes around his body. 

A mummy. She had tied him up like a mummy. Neji closed his eyes briefly, inhaling slowly, his mind racing for an escape. Between the bunker and the sarcophagus, there was little room for him to breathe, even if his pain had faded. He fingers brushed by his left pocket, feeling for his keys. 

"I’ve waited two years to tell you this well thought out argument, and you’re vegetarian?" she said quietly. 

Tenten leaned in closer. Under his wavering gaze, she pulled at each corner of her face, smoothly rearranging it until all the emotions boiling inside her, all the thoughts and prayers she couldn’t say anymore faded out. Pinching his lips, he juggled his keys faintly, and her empty smile widened. 

She let him hang on to futile hope. 

"So, this is how disappointed hopes feel like." Her tone, her frigid manner unwrapped empty words, and a gutted façade. 

"You’re insane." 

She held up her hand, and her gaze rest for a moment on the stiff halting movements of his hand over his pocket. 

"I need a moment," she added theatrically, her voice too brisk, too frigid. 

When she leaned in over him again, her expression crushed his thundering heart without touching him. He froze staring into her eyes. She decayed before his eyes, her smile melting into a poisonous curl, her eyes without the contact lenses narrowing and darkening, flashing deep red. 

"So, where were we?" Tenten asked sardonically and her face grew icy, the mask of a monster. "I eat people, you’re a pissy vegetarian... Oh, right, you’re people. Why hello there, human with fresh brains," she spat. "Maybe, I’ll just digest you then, since you completely screwed up my life. The parietal lobe will do, all revenge plans considered. No offence but I’d rather die than eat your frontal lobe... Your personality just seems a little too rigid for me." 

"Hn." 

"Come on, Hyuuga! This is our first and last meeting..." she taunted, and she grew darker, sharper, until they glared at each other, pausing, panting. 

They had both lost to each other somehow. 

"Give me a little banter here," she ordered, her voice like drying honey. 

Neji didn’t understand her violence, her pursued lips that was beyond pain and anger, and it unsettled him how little he had been prepared for her. A zombie who had lived among humans. A zombie who had healed him. And he wanted to ask her who she was. Not what. Who. 

"No," Neji said thickly, and she clicked her tongue. "No banter." 

For the briefest moment, he thought she was going to kill him. He saw her sharp intake, her pinched nostrils, slipping mouth, but she simply scooped down and rose the sarcophagus’ lid with one arm. 

"Yeah, I think your whole brain is no-go. I can’t be walking around this self-righteous and the opposite of fun. Bye-bye!" 

"Stop!" Neji shouted, terrified the darkness would drag back the ghost of the bunker. 

Without hesitation, she slammed the lid of the sarcophagus shut over him. 

"Hey!" His ties dug into his skin as he struggled. 

His heart hammering his skull, Neji heard her furious steps, heels beating the ground rather than gliding across it like they had when they had met. He opened his mouth to shout again, but the pain she had kept at bay with an injection had crawled back, now nested at the base of his neck. 

Groggily, Neji faded in and out, and time rewound again. 

He drifted, from memory to memory, screaming savagely at the boy in the bunker to leave him alone. He should have buried him, seven feet under, in the middle of the wilderness with what was left of his family.

 

* * *

 

Kiba Inuzuka hated the smell of the city when it rained. 

It would grip him, a thick veil that dampened smells, and extinct his senses. He closed his eyes, his jaw clenched, slowly peeling apart Lieutenant Torune Aburame’s smell, pungent and toxic, and the scent of the alley, garbage containers and muddy puddles, until he could focus on the soft trail of Neji. His scent was airy, it wobbled in and out of reach, deeper into the textile factories. He could also distinguish something wooden, and cheap lead paint, steel, and the fainting scent of a zombie. And blood. 

Kiba opened his eyes, his hand growing cold and numb around the handle of his umbrella. 

The chilly air of the night rustled, pearls of rains gathering on his trench coat as he turned toward Torune. He hadn’t bothered with an umbrella, letting the cold rain freely drip down his face and plaster his dark hair to his skull. His sunglasses hid half his face, fogged and out of place. 

"Well?" Torune asked in his croaky, broken voice. He stepped closer to him, and Kiba’s nostrils flared, the smell of various poisons overwhelming him. 

"He’s near..." Kiba said. 

"So you _can_ smell him out like a good dog." 

"Fuck off, Torune," Kiba grumbled and started advancing deeper into the industrial neighbourhood. "What do you think I’ve been doing?" 

He stepped over a puddle, and automatically, he sniffed the air again, past Torune, until he smelled textile, and Neji. A little farther. 

"That’s Lieutenant to you, Inuzuka." Torune fell into step with him, too near, and Kiba had to clench his jaw not to snap back at the mocking tone. "Especially when you’ve been taking your mother’s sweat ass time locating him," he sneered and, in spite of him, Kiba slowed. "Three days!" 

"It’s the rain, and I’ve just told you he’s near!" Glowering, Kiba focused on the glistering red bricks and faint traces of soot near the old chimneys. ‘And your fucking stench,’ he added mentally. 

"You’ve said that before. All I’m saying is maybe, things would have gone faster if Hyuuga wasn’t the only human who liked hanging out with a dog." 

"We’ve found his car," Kiba snapped, and anger flooded the pit of his stomach, choking him. "We’ve found his badge and gun... My nose was never wrong." 

"Convenient it was never right either. I just hope you understand if we don’t find him dead or alive soon, the director will think you’ve been a bad dog. And bag dogs get put down." 

Kiba turned briskly, and they leaned in, their noses almost touching. Torune’s lips curled in a cold smile, unabashed, because he was the director’s right hand, and Kiba was only a dog. Kiba’s low growl turned into a smile full of incisive and violence. Prosthetics, enhancements that still made him valuable within the Bureau. 

"In my experience, bad dogs can tear a head off," Kiba muttered darkly through clenched teeth. 

"Now, that you feel like the alpha dog, go on, lead the way to your _friend_. We don’t have all day and this alley is a shit hole," Torune replied flatly, and pointed ahead of them in the wet quivering darkness of the alley. 

Mumbling curses under his breath, Kiba took the lead, and he made a detour, smirking to himself. Torune would never know. They turned around again and again, finally coming out on the street, their trench coat drenched, and the chilly wind gnawing at their bones. 

The sound of metal clicking, and wheezes of old machines rose thickly in the air as they approached. Kiba thought of a chainsaw, and he grew rigid. In normal circumstances, Neji would have reappeared after his hunt, but there was something about this zombie that changed everything; Torune was shadowing him, Neji was gone, and the zombie was seemingly still free. 

It felt like a trap. 

Something was wrong. 

They stopped in front of a factory near the old docks. The water was stagnant, covered in oozing mud and teeming with insects. 

Silently, Kiba gestured for Torune, mouthing, "he’s alone". The Lieutenant stared ahead, a vague smile on his smile as he reached up and took off his sunglasses. The door of the textile factory was opened, its insides, unlit. They looked up slowly, the sign of the name of the factory, crumbling, its metal wires torn for some letters, but still visible, ‘ _Gloves For Ladies and Gentlemen_ ’. 

They drew their gun at the same time. 

Kiba nodded at him, gesturing toward the left, but Torune once more ignored him. He walked ahead this time, and Kiba followed suit, his jaw clenched. Broken glasses covered the cement floor, and around them, the conveyor belt turned and turned, half-screeching. Torune leaned over a half open crate and took out a glove. He waved it under Kiba’s nose in a mocking gesture before letting it drop to the floor. 

Kiba didn’t react, pointing instead at the IV line and beeping machines in front of him. A screen buzzed, the image of a brain scan flickering, and medical instruments caught the blue light, gleaming dully. 

In the centre of the main room lied a sarcophagus. 

Kiba could hear a heartbeat, but his skin turned icy. The IV line was linked to the sarcophagus. He could smell her scent all over him, his blood, but more pronounced now was the acrid smell of detergent. 

Torune walked briskly toward the sarcophagus and threw the lid open. 

Neji’s skin was pale, yellowish, sweat gathering at his temples and brows. His eyes rolled unfocused and his cracked lips muttered incoherent words. 

"Neji!" Kiba stammered in surprise, and he sheathed back his gun. 

"It seems like the director was right to worry about your abilities," Torune stated with a soft sigh, as he shook his head. "Maybe retirement is in order." 

"Get me out of here," Neji rasped, but Torune didn’t move. He reached inside the sarcophagus and tugged at the thick ropes wrapped around him, examining them with an expression of boredom.

Glaring, Kiba brushed past him and reached for his hunting knife. He cut at the ropes with difficulty, holding Neji in a half-up position. The ties gave way and the sarcophagus toppled over as Neji tried to step out of it. Kiba caught his arm, and they watched, blanching, as dozens and dozens of black gloves fell on the floor.

"We’ve orders to take you back to the Office."

"Hn," Neji’s hair fell across his face, his white eyes hardening. 

They knew. They both knew. Neji pushed Kiba’s hand away from him, and the fumbled with the IV cannula. Wincing, Kiba watched as he removed it gently the IV line, leaving the cannula in his veins.

"Lead the way, Lieutenant." 

Neji’s careful steps echoed roughly alongside Torune’s heavy boots. 

They didn’t speak.

Torune still held his gun in his hand. 

Kiba let the sounds, the smells of them wash over him. He looked around the factory one last time, his boot nudging at the broken glass on the floor. Her scent trail ended here, masked and twisted. He sniffed again, but the vials at his feet contained no scent. Then, he retraced his steps across the city, finding his car, badge and jacket across town, a aimless wild chase. He gulped, as he crouched down and picked up a piece of glass. He weighed it in his hand, finally understanding why it had taken him so long.

 _Wolf’s bane_. 

Kiba looked back at Neji’s thinned out shadow, his gaze boring through the weariness of his body, breaking, halting his movements. He stood up slowly, his fist closing around the glass before throwing it away from him. 

He wondered if he knew, she had used wolf’s bane to hide him for days.

He wondered if he knew, there was a traitor in the Bureau.

And a small part of him wondered it could be Neji. If the director was right to doubt him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my hand keeps slipping. This will be approximatively 10 chapters long and there will be hints of KibaIno and JuuSaku. (The tags have been updated, but it case you missed them... 😊). As always, kudos and comments are welcome and very much appreciated! 👯


	3. Midnight Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter ahead, enjoy, you guys! :D

_Zombie Virus Regulation Office  
_ _Walled-in city of Konoha_

Director Danzou Shimura watched Special Agent Neji Hyuuga through a one-sided window, his hand stiffening around the pommel of his cane. He wished he could let him go easily, with disdain, his existence already forgotten. He wished Neji was a completely useless piece, battered, changed into a zombie. Not a cold killer who had made one too many mistakes. Someone he couldn't trust anymore.

He straightened his back, forcing his hand to loosen around his cane.

The boy needed to be disposed of. He said it aloud, softly, to himself, focusing on the doctor's sharp intake of breath that came from behind him, and the sigh of glee that resonated next to him.

Torune stepped closer to him, but Director Shimura's eyes remained on the scene unfolding in the clean room.

Behind the tinted glass, two doctors indicated gestures for him to do and Neji imitated them, his shirt unbuttoned. His shoes were neatly placed at the bottom of the examination table.

"What do you think, Torune?"

"I think Hyuuga is a lover of all animals. Dogs and zombies alike."

Neji looked up at that moment with white eyes ringed by dark circles, and Director Shimura's face twitched. He recoiled before he could catch himself, an iron fist around a wooden cane supporting a gnarled leg. Neji, and his white eyes that had always shamelessly peeled at the bandages around his half-eaten out face and his twisted, broken leg.

The familiar outrage choked him.

How dare Neji look at the director like that when _**he**_ was a broken boy from the wilderness? A wild boy with nothing. A wild boy who had failed the hand that had fed and raised him.

Director Shimura pinched his lips and stepped closer to the window. His ample sleeve hid his trembling hand.

He was invincible, the man behind every one-sided window. The man in charge of the city of Konoha. Yet, his skin pickled, and he still thought he could feel Neji's icy glare piercing through him.

It wouldn't be easy to kill him, after all he had survived the wilderness.

But he had failed the director. Hyugga had failed the Office, and failures were not to be tolerated. This was what he would tell the other agents. He would bury the rest; one of his special agent and a zombie...

"Dr Haruno, what does the report say?"

"He hasn’t been contaminated," Dr Sakura Haruno said softly, and she pressed her clipboard closer to her chest. "His heartbeat is normal and his eyes haven't changed colour after all this time. We'll wait for the blood sample results to be sure, but it seems he is still human."

"What did she do to him?" he growled through barred teeth.

"She sewed him back, and she injected him with a cerebral regenerative solution, it seems. She put him in induced coma for approximately three days."

The director clicked his tongue. A traitor, a sympathizer among his own organization...

"Do we know how she gained access to that medical equipment?"

"She ordered it through a company named: YFZ," Dr Haruno cleared her throat, her cheeks turning bright pink. "We believe it stands for Your Favourite Zombie, sir."

"Thank you, Dr Haruno. No, stay," he added in a bark when she moved toward the door.

Director Shimura's gaze shifted to Torune's reflection. His dark eyes gleamed, his waxy skin sunken and his features floated, indistinct. Director Shimura's lips curled in disgust. He had recruited Torune because he was desperate to be improved, enhanced, evolved into a superhuman that was perfect and resistant to all poisons. And desperate men made good soldiers in the establishment of a new world. And Danzou would be the new emperor of such a world, an enhanced, renewed world without zombie.

Under him, they would take back the wilderness as theirs.

So, he would pet Torune, stroke his ego when needed, and use him to all his might.

"Torune, you know what to do with him, then."

"Maybe," Torune started and moistened his lips, his eyes gleaming with ferocity, "Maybe, we should use the Dog for the girl."

"I told you to play nice with Inuzuka," Director Shimura snapped, his annoyance stronger than his anger. "I told you we needed him. I'm not repeating myself, Torune."

A part of him rejoiced when Torune flinched. After all, Kiba Inuzuka was enhanced, and Torune was not. Viciously, he had always played this jealousy to keep Torune entrapped within the reach of his hand, one pat on the head, one knife against his throat. Breathing heavily, Director Shimura now wondered if it would be enough. If Torune would be the next one in the clean room, probed and taken apart by faceless doctors.

"But sir!" Torune protested, and he snapped his mouth shut when the director's head whipped toward him.

Quivers by quivers, anger deformed his features, his scars carved out, his mouth twisted grotesquely. Why were they _**all**_ disappointing him today?

"Do you think I'm not thinking this through, Torune? Do you think me stupid or senile?" he cackled darkly. "Do think I have no plan for Inuzuka?"

"Of course not, sir-"

"You monitor the dog, and kill its master."

"Yes, sir."

"Never contradict me again, Torune."

"Yes, sir. I apologize."

Torune bowed stiffly, his gaze lingering on the director's angry face. He stepped out of the room slowly, hoping he would be called back, hoping he was still useful.

In the farthest corner of the room, Dr Haruno glanced up at him, her light eyes flickering with something Torune couldn’t place. He paused briefly, his gaze meeting hers. She looked away first, bowing her head slightly, her hands tightening once more around the clipboard.

The door slid shut after him.

When Torune was gone, Director Shimura turned back toward the doctor, and he gestured for her to join him.

Sakura's pale skin shimmered in the half-darkness of the observation room. She had a delicate face that crumpled easily, perpetually torn by mute shuddering sobs and sheer terror. That was why he kept around her; easily controlled, already broken over and over again. Weak.

"This girl... thing," her meek voice started, but hesitated. Like her face, her voice was frail, haltering, feminine and ravaged by monsters. "We can’t have Orochimaru find her first. He’ll turn her into... something much worse."

Director Shimura cocked his head to the side, his dark eyes appraising how the doctors made Neji dress again.

"Dr Haruno, do you know why you are here?"

"Sir?" She looked up at him, her clipboard quivering in her grasp, her mouth curled down.

So fearful. So fragile.

Director Shimura smirked.

"Why do you think you are here on this side of the glass?" he repeated, and he avidly gobbled her fragility, his eyes flickering across her paling face.

Sakura didn’t answer immediately, the back of her neck prickling. She refused to give him the satisfaction of a faltering glance, a devastated smile. She concentrated on Special Agent Neji Hyuuga talking lowly with the doctor in the room with him. She concentrated on the way he projected calmness and control, even though he certainly knew what would happen next.

Sakura wondered if Director Shimura saw any of her tangled thoughts reflected on her face, when he opened his mouth again.

"Patient 0 went on a rampage because of you. He's dead because of you," the director sighed as if he was disappointed in her too. "You are on this side of the glass, so you can remember that your failures have consequences."

"We are doing everything we can, sir, but we can’t make more advances on the vaccine without her," Sakura said quickly, and one of her hands reached inside her lab coat's pocket, stiffly closing onto random objects. "The virus has mutated a little in each zombie, she’s the closest-"

"I’m not asking you to rehash Dr Senju’s arguments," the director interrupted her sharply. "I asked you here, so you could tell me where you think she’d go? You know zombies inside out. Tell me. How do we find her, now?"

Sakura bit her below lip and turned back toward the window. She shook her head slowly, thinking fast, weighing each word.

"It looks like she’s sentimental about the museum," Sakura said slowly. "She never left her job even though there’s no... food-related advantages about it. But she changed apartments a lot. She must have... a way to get brains. If we find it, we find her."

The director's face twitched.

He thought of her eyes, red and monstrous. Once he caught her, he would rip them out, and extend his collection. After all, they didn't need her to have her eyes to test for the vaccine. They only needed her body.

"She’s trapped in the city with an almost unlimited food supply," Director Shimura breathed out, his hand shaking with the strength of his grip on his cane.

She was his. Yes, her eyes were his, little trophies to show Orochimaru how he, Danzou Shimura, owned this city and his gruesome little pets. And he would destroy this world Orochimaru had tried to create with monstrosities, and establish a new order, with superhumans.

"Yes, but we only know of her because we know P-patient 0," she stumbled over his name, a mistake, he couldn't attribute to anything else than her seemingly shyness. "We know she was there because of him. There’s no evidence she hunts."

"Funeral homes, then?"

She nodded quickly.

"And hospitals."

"I’m glad I’ve kept you around, Dr Haruno. I just hope I don’t come to regret it like it is the case for Hyuuga."

Director Shimura dismissed her with a flick of the wrist, and turned away from her. She bowed, carefully letting her pink hair fall across her face, hiding her lips curling up across her teeth in a savage snarl.

He would regret keeping her around. She was counting on it.

 

* * *

 

_Old Taka Estate  
_ _Walled-in city of Konoha_

Sakura Haruno clenched her jaw as she faced the tall walls surrounding the old Taka estate.

The wild fields surrounding the estate had been destroyed, repurposed into tight gloomy apartment building that towered over the estate. The road itself, which had once stopped at the estate in smooth gleaming asphalt. Now the road was crooked, curving around a sea of buildings.

Sakura looked over her shoulder at the empty road.

Every time she approached the mansion, she could feel her soul smashed, severed in troubled pieces dangling in the past, the present. The past her, the doctor that was too curious, too much in love, and the present her, the drifting island of guilt. Shapeless. Lost. And these two sides of her fought, tore at each other, irreconcilable uneven pieces.

Mad.

She was the mad scientist who had started it all.

Sakura's pink hair ruffled softly in the warm air as she held onto the package of brains.

She took another step toward the gate.

Sakura had always hated how the house was hidden behind a tall gate of wrought iron and green hills, smudged shadows held by medieval blackened towers. She had told Juugo, once, that it felt like his family was always waiting for an army to invade their estate, huddled over unattainable walls. He had spoken of calm and serenity and birds.

His birds were gone now.

His house had become one of the many abandoned houses across a broken, dismantled country.

Because of what they did.

Sakura straightened her back before letting her purse's strap fall to the tip of her finger as she passed through the ajar gate.

Every aspect of the mansion was polished, a war against disuse and decadence, but the vines ate at the carved stones and a few crows perched high, croaked and flapped their wings. Under her shoes, gravel rolled and spilled in all direction. Nature gnarled at the pretence of old money and fame, a pre-zombie world when rich families thought iron gate would resist zombies.

Sakura reached the doorstep, her members stiffening. She didn't have time to knock before it flung open.

"You're late," Tenten croaked, and snatched the package out of her hands.

Sakura's shoulders sagged at the lost of weight, and she took a step back, repelled, disgusted.

The glimpse she caught of Tenten was a blur of white strands of hair escaping her usually neat and complex hairstyles. Her skin had glimmered polished white, more bones than flesh. A walking cadaver.

There were desperate pattering of steps, bare feet slapping at the marble floor. Out of hunger. Out of despair. And Sakura's mind replayed briefly the memory of Tenten in sweatpants, careless, her naked feet always propped up against her desk while she studied.

In medical school, Tenten hadn't cared about her appearance and wild nature.

Sakura winced at the memory, her foot hesitating on the first step the stairs out of the entrance, her eyelashes fluttering. The door closed softly behind her.

She could hear a low rumbles of voices from an open television or a radio, static and indistinct.

Awkwardly, Sakura stood in semi-darkness wondering if the past rules of removing one's shoes still applied. She felt oppressed, her heart pounding uncomfortably in her chest, her fingers growing cold and rigid. Around her, the curtains hung heavily in front of the windows, blocking all the light in black velvet that reminded Sakura of coffins.

In the kitchen, the blender shrilled, and Sakura startled, gulping with difficulty. She readjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. She breathed deeply, one hand on the door, hovering around the lock. She never knew which was safer, inside with the monster she had created or outside with the humans she planned to kill.

Silently, she climbed up the stairs on shaky legs. Her steps clicked when she reached the hall. Biting her lip, she walked toward the kitchen to the left.

"Oh, sweet honey bee, this feels good," Tenten moaned, her mouth full.

Sakura shook her head and glanced back for a moment at the door still unlocked behind her. It taunted her, tightly wrapped in still darkness.

She cleared her throat and entered the kitchen.

Tenten was hunched over the counter, gulping down thick paste of brains mixed with fruit. Plastic containers of various fruit were empty, disregarded around her, the refrigerator still open.

"You should close that," Sakura said, and she wondered if she still sounded the same as when they were in med school; exasperated by Tenten's carelessness.

"And you should drop by in time," Tenten replied, tilting the bowl of the blender back against her mouth. She set the blender back on the counter with too much force. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she circled the counter and slammed the door of the refrigerator shut with her other hand.

"Why are you still here? " Tenten narrowed her eyes at her, darkened red shifting across her features. Her pale skin gleamed, her mouth red, monstrous, blue veins running across her skin.

"Brain in, Sakura out, or have the rules change?" Tenten asked icily before parting her mouth to drink more of her mixture of brains and fruit.

With pinched lips, Sakura looked away, her stomach heaving, her heart decaying away in the past. She was the only one of their group who hadn't turned into a monster. She couldn't bear it. She couldn't see them as the same colleagues, the same friends; they were soiled, changed by blood, and brains, and the history of injected vials and poisonous teeth that divided them.

"I need a favour," Sakura cleared her throat, and hesitated, before slowly sitting down at the kitchen's table.

"Funny, because I also need a favour..." Tenten drawled out, with her arms crossed over her chest. "Once a month." she punctuated each word, her face gleaming in the darkness. "Not three days later. Especially after I did you a favour." she glared at her, before adding to break the uncomfortable silence: "How's sleeping beauty?"

"He's going to die," Sakura said and looked down at her hands. She rubbed them against each other, abruptly yearning to feel the drum of her own heart, the heat of her skin. Seeing Tenten always made her feel dead. Just like seeing Juugo did.

The muscle of her jaw worked.

She wondered if Tenten also kept a head count, if seeing her only reminded her of death.

"Yeah, I hear this is what happens when you're mortal," Tenten's sarcastic voice echoed vaguely, through the thick fog of her mind.

Sakura inhaled shakily.

"Tenten..."

"Fuck off, Sakura." Tenten spat out with a quivering voice. She waved her off, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Honestly, just fuck off," she added in a low voice.

"I’ll give you brains for months if you leave with him."

Tenten's eyes snapped open, glowing, rimmed with dark circles that sunk into her paling skin.

"Oh, so this is what this is about?" she hissed, and she shook her head, her whole body, her whole soul recoiling from his name. "You starve me, so I'll approach Juugo again. No way, nuh-nuh. This asshole almost killed me last time. You deal with him!" Her voice broke, haltered, now a yell that boomed and boomed. Animalistic. "You said you'd deal with him."

"I’m not talking about Juugo," Sakura said softly.

"Then, who are you talking about?"

"Neji Hyuuga."

Tenten gaped at her.

She swore loudly, and ran her hands in her hair.

"Are you insane? I’ve just escaped him. You even made me sew him back! What more do you need from me?"

"He was never meant to find you, and now..."

"Now, he’s gonna die, yeah, you just said," Tenten shrugged, but her eyes were ablaze. "At least, he’ll see it coming unlike me."

Sakura flinched.

"Listen..."

"Get out of here," Tenten snapped and threw her head back to down more of the brain mixture.

"Please... You need to listen to me."

"Why..." Tenten started, her throat closing in, her tongue licking at her bloodied lips. "Why the fuck would I do that?"

She shook her head furiously and carefully lowered the blender back on the counter. She feared she would lose control. She feared she would turn into Juugo, hurling blender and microwave at Sakura's head.

"Every time you mess up I need to clean up your mess. Look where this got us." Tenten said quietly.

"This isn’t fair," Sakura mumbled.

Her anger devoured, ripped apart her features; Tenten had barely had the mind to drag herself to the Taka estate. She hadn't remembered why, she needed to come to the mansion. She had been a mouth without a mind. Was any of _this_ fair?

"You won’t make me cry, Haruno. I paid the ultimate price! You didn’t!" Tenten shouted, her chest heaving slowly, half-dead, while her breath, her heart should have quickened, grown deafening, had she still been human.

"They’ll find you if you stay in the city. They know your face, your name... They have your fingerprints all around your office at the museum. Please, Tenten, you're already going... Just take him too. I just..." Sakura bit her bottom lip. It trembled, her eyes burning with hushed tears. "I just can't take responsibility for one more body."

"Guilt..." Tenten said flatly after a while, and Sakura startled, her eyes widening. "We aren’t friends anymore, are we? You just come here, help me with brains and to stay out of your Office’s path because of the guilt you feel."

"Tennie... It's not true," Sakura stammered.

"I’ll take your Special Agent out of the city," Tenten said and looked away, her jaw set. "but I need brains. Loads of them. And passports to enter the next city. Then, we're done."

Sakura nodded sharply, clearing her throat, blinking away her tears.

"You’ll have them in the morning," she said soberly.

Sakura's hands curled around each other. Heart beat. Warmth. Humanity. She stood up. She couldn't help but feel stabs of relief.

"How’s Juugo?"

Sakura froze, clutching her purse to her side, and she raised her head, expecting a snarl or a vicious glint in her eyes. Tenten was half-turned away from her, her fists rising and falling, never actually touching the counter.

Sakura's eyes burned with withheld tears. They had been so close, the three of them.

"I can’t wake him up without..." she stopped herself, her fingers brushing against where bruises had faded. "He can’t control himself," she said finally.

Tenten laughed dryly, and she leaned over the counter, her palms flat against the black marble, like a prowling animal.

"Last friendly advice, I guess... Let him go. Some monsters are just that... monsters. No redemption arc, no nothing. It’s time you move on, Sakura."

Swiftly, Tenten started cleaning up the counter, piling up the empty fruit containers. Sakura watched her for a moment, as she released the mixer bowl from the blender. So in control. So unlike Juugo. A flash of anger erupted, poignant, inside her. Why did it have to be Juugo who woke up as the uncontrollable monster?

"What about you?" Sakura asked mercilessly, and her chin trembled. "Do you believe in redemption? I saw what life you made for yourself at that museum..."

"But did you see how I was the big monster hiding in the cave?"

Sakura shivered, taken-back.

"Tennie..."

"We're done, remember?" she spat coldly. "Now, get out of here before I change my mind."

Sakura turned back toward her one last time as she exited the kitchen.

"Neji Hyuuga... He survived the wilderness," Sakura said. "That's why the Office recruited him. I thought you should know."

Tenten closed her eyes, her mind still sparse, disorganized. Her fists clenched over the blender, tremors slicing through her. She drank again, larger mouthfuls now that she was alone. She felt her receding hunger in sharp needles shifting beneath her skin as she appeared more and more human.

' _The wilderness_ ,' the words echoed in her jumbled head, and glacial terror gnawed at her insides.

She knew the wilderness was where monster hid. Beyond the wall. In deserted, scavenged towns and emptied forests.

It was where monsters died.

 

* * *

 

_Zombie Virus Regulation Office  
_ _Walled-in city of Konoha_  

He sat one last time at his desk.

Neji's fingers traced the stitches on his forehead, again and again, methodically, as if he would find a new emerging pattern. He thought of her gloves, then her naked hands on his skin, and he couldn't understand why he was still alive and still human.

With his feet, Neji spun the chair around, and the leather squeaked, shifted under his weight. Absentmindedly, he followed with his eyes the thinning traffic as the sun set, the hour of the curfew drawing nearer. His execution drawing nearer.

They would come for him when he expected it the least; it was how terror was stroked into an imperishable fire that gave the Director absolute control over the city.

Neji lowered his hand on the armrest. He tapped it softly.

Once, he had escaped the cage that was the bunker. He never considered the Office would become a new cage. And yet...

Neji stood up and buttoned back his jacket, his eyes shifting, past the paling walls surrounding the city like a noose tightening. Had he really thought it would never come to this? Had he really thought naïvely, childishly that the bunker would be his first only cage?

"Get money and some clothes, and get the hell out of this city before Torune finds you," Kiba whispered from behind him.

Neji glanced at him over his shoulder. Kiba's skin beneath his cheek tattoos was pale, the corner of his mouth curved into a snarl he couldn't fight.

"Inuzuka," Neji said stiffly.

He didn't know what else to say. There was still the board covered in his writing between them, the words "velvet gloves" circled in red. There was also an abyss of silence and friendship and sadness between them, and it couldn't be filled. It couldn't be crossed.

"Just do it," Kiba said gruffly, and he turned away from him. "You always speak of the right thing, this is it this time. Running away. You survived the wilderness once. You can do it again."

The absolution nailed Neji into place. Kiba's hurried steps out of their office resonated within him.

"Thank you," he muttered even if Kiba was already gone.

Neji inhaled sharply and turned back toward the city glistering in pink and deepening red rays. He waited for the shapeless veil of nightfall before he moved again. Soft rain pattered against the windows, the clouds low, but invisible. Oppressing.

He passed by Kiba's desk and grabbed his magic 8-ball. He weighed it carefully in his hand, words gleaming in its core: ' _Outlook not so good_ '.

He smirked.

"And I'm sorry."

Fingers still wrapped around the 8-ball, Neji walked down the hallway, the door of his office left open. He stopped randomly, prying offices open, the cameras' red eyes, unblinking, wheezing as they followed him. He searched through pockets and drawers, accumulating car keys, house keys, shoving them in his pocket, his heart, his mind racing.

Neji hurried down the hallway, glancing over his shoulder, nodding at the rare colleague still on this level.

He called for the elevator, his palms moist.

He was a survivor, he reminded himself.

In his pockets, his fingers brushed against the keys, picking one at random. He didn't know how much time he could buy with his ploy, but he needed them to think for at least one hour that he chose a random car and raced across town. Special agents and other government officials didn't need to respect the curfew, but Neji knew one car could easily be tracked at this hour.

So, he would walk.

Neji stepped into the elevator and his finger hovered above the floor of the director's office. For a moment, he wanted to press it. With his jaw clenched, he quickly pressed the button for the parking lot level. He looked at the blinking numbers of the floors above the door. Briefly, he felt his stitches, his face hardening.

The elevator dinged and stopped.

He walked out, the air suffocating, gasoline and burnt rubber. Only some parking spots were empty, and the remaining cars gleamed with steel bars, weaponized, under the cold yellowish lights.

His eyes shifted to the corner of the room where he knew the camera was. He walked slowly toward it, his hand tightening around the magic 8-ball. Once he was directly below the camera, he threw it at it.

It fizzled, the wires now loose.

The ball crashed on the cement ground, a loud reverberating echo, its content splattered on wall.

Neji sprinted across the rows of cars toward the staircase, counting the seconds in his head. Wildly, his finger pressed against the alarm buttons of random car keys. It took some time for the first car's alarm to blare. He ran faster, zigzagging between parked cars while holding up keys after keys. More and more alarms shrilled.

He threw the door of the emergency staircase open, just as the world turned red, dimmed and loud. He climbed two stairs at a time to the main floor, his saliva thickening, his brows furrowed in concentration.

Above his head, the alarm blared, increasing in volume with each passing second.

"Attention. Security breach code red. Agents proceed to the exit," a robotic voice screeched through the speakers.

The staircase quivered under the fast pounding steps of security agents coming down the stairs, the sound of them, the presence of them buried by the shrillness of the alarm. He softened the sound of his steps, pushing himself through the few more stairs before the door of the main floor.

The stairs shook, a growing rumble, and sweat dripped down his forehead.

Panting, Neji opened the door and joined the crowd of agents forming on the main entrance.

"Attention. Security breach code red. Agents proceed to the exit," the voice in the speaker repeated, now resonating louder in the grand hall.

Neji pressed his body against faceless nameless colleagues, ducking his head slightly to hide his face.

He tried to slow his breathing.

The mouths of his colleagues buzzed with rumours and sighs and impatience, and Neji prayed no one would notice him, his face white, his eyes wide. When he exited the building with the other agents, his heart pounding against each bone of his body.

The breeze of the night cooled his burning skin, the rain sticking to his skin.

The descent of the cement stairs onto the street was slow, uncomfortable; he was with them, but he was also painfully alone.

Neji couldn't help it glancing back at the banner rustling in the air against the tall building. A light perpetually illuminated the logo, a collective memory, the history of gore and pain of the zombie virus outbreak: the mace of steel.

Neji stepped away from the crowd in receding steps, then he turned and ran away without looking back.

He knew it was risky to return home, but he needed a weapon if he was going back to the wilderness. He refused to think about what would happen next, where he would go. His mind turned to the bunker, conjuring up the weight of the sandy air burning through the vents, the clicking of the water tank filling on rainy days.

Neji shook his head, shivering in the rain, refusing the scattered paths of his mind that dragged him back to the desert where the bunker was buried.

He swallowed his quickened breaths as he jogged through the empty streets toward his apartment, taking narrow one-way streets.

Rain dropped gathered, shimmering pearls on his jacket, and he puffed white smoke. He felt heavier, but he didn't know if it was the soft beating of the rain, or the static air, low clouds, or quiet breeze. Or if the weariness was inside him, a savage beast nibbling at his mind, memories rippling back to the surface.

Neji slowed when he reached the corner of his street, his face gleaming with sweat.

He edged out of an alley, surveying the front of his apartment building, his pants deafening, his muscles tensing. He took a step out of the alley and froze. Neji squinted, and he saw someone sitting on the stairs of his apartment. His ample clothes, the still darkness almost hid them from view.

The click of a gun rang in his ear, and he flattened himself against the wall. The bullet spun, lost in the night, the dust of shattered bricks settling on his jacket. He heard slow steps, fear gripping his throat.

His heartbeat quickened.

He couldn't move.

"Nice work at the parking lot by the way, but I knew you would come here," Torune shouted in the empty street, and stood up with a sigh, his eyes searching the darkness. "Men like you are just too sentimental for this line of work."

Neji gulped with difficulty, and his body moved slowly, receding back in the alley, toward the heavy scent of the dumpster.

He had no weapon.

Neji blended with the shadows of the alley, skin rubbed raw against the wall bricks where he hid. He closed his eyes, counting Torune’s steps as he entered the alley.

He ran.

He ran for the nearest car, keeping low. Gunshots wheezed past his head, erupting around him, digging holes, denting the cars. Sirens blared. Sharps of glass clawed at his face, tangled in his hair, as the window exploded above him when he reached for the door. The pain in his hand was hot, then ice-cold as his blood gushed from a flesh wound.

Torune changed the empty charger of his gun, laughing low and menacingly.

The darkness made him indistinct, but didn't erase him completely.

He knew Neji was trapped.

Sliding down, Neji hissed staring at his bleeding hand. The blood dripped down his suit, thick and darkening, flowing continually. He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around his hand.

He was losing blood.

He was losing time.

"Oi, Hyuuga, I expected at least a little more fight," Torune taunted, turning on himself with his arms spread wide. "Where's your gun? Ohhh! Right!" he snapped his fingers carelessly waving his gun around. "We took it and never gave it back. How thoughtful of us, don't you think? And I bet you were coming home to get a gun?"

Panting, Neji felt for the ground, the gutter, and rolled and rolled under the car. Slow steps approached him, and his heart pounding at the back of his throat. He closed his eyes. The steps stopped.

"I know you are here," Torune sing-sang.

Neji kicked at Torune’s ankle, a satisfying crack echoing followed by a sharp cry of pain. He heard him stagger, hard rubs against the wet ground. He kicked again and the gun thudded on the ground, slipping down the street. Neji panted, his face drenched in sweat, and he quickly crawled back on all fours on the other side of the car.

He gagged over the scent of gasoline.

He leaped for the gun, his hand trembling.

White hands shot out of the darkness and pulled him back. The two men rolled on the ground, groans against groans, knees against knees, small rocks digging into their skin. Neji's hand tightened around Torune's neck, his other fist buried in his gut, and they stilled, drained, breathless, their cheeks ablaze, pressed against the road.

A knife shot up. Neji threw his head back, avoiding the tip of a knife. He saw the dimmed reflection of his blank eyes, Torune's black widened ones and pinched lips on the blade.

The knife stabbed the shadows again, ripping Neji's shirt, quivering against his skin, as Neji gripped Torune's wrist.

Clenching his jaw from the effort, Neji tore Torune's hand away from him and elbowed him in the face. The knife spun away, and the gun gleamed once more, sleek from the rain. His fingers brushed against it, and Torune kicked him.

He gasped in pain, dizzy.

He rolled on the ground. His left hand closed around the gun.

Neji staggered back to his feet, glancing down at Torune’s obscured face.

He leaned against a car for support, and the gun grew heavier and heavier.

"There’s no coming back," Torune cackled with bloodied teeth, lying on his back, his leg twisted beneath him. "The director..."

Neji shot him in the face.

The sound of the gunshot hung, blanketing Neji's body like the embrace of a ghost, cold and ultimate.

Torune's face was gone, gnarled burnt flesh in a pool of blood and brains.

There was only deafening silence in his head as Neji straightened up, and he lowered his arm.

"I knew you would come here too," Neji whispered, and he tasted blood, metal and rust. Steel. Gun powder. Death.

Wearily, Neji stepped over the cadaver, his bloodied hand too shaky to search his pockets. He grimaced, his hand burning, throbbing with pain.

His phone rang piercing, and he startled.

Neji cursed, his mind frozen, his hand searching for his phone, as he backed away from the corpse. He slowed, the breath knocked out of him when he saw the caller ID: 'Your Favourite Zombie'. His phone blinked when the call went to voice mail.

It dinged with a new text.

'Waiting for you at the old Taka estate. -Your Favourite Zombie'

With trembling fingers, blood smudged over each number, barely registering, Neji called back.

" _Hello,_ _soldier boy_ _,_ " Tenten's voice said cheerfully after the first ringtone. " _Was my text unclear or..._ "

"How the hell did you get this number?" he snapped icily, but his mouth could barely form the words.

Slowly, he spun on himself expecting her to be watching him.

" _Oh, I thought I may prank call you once in a while,_ _so I put my number on your phone_ _when you were sleeping_ _._ _Anyway, that's not important right now_ _..._ _unless_ _you want to chitchat, or do you want to survive? Cuz, tic toc, darlin', it's almost tea time, and by_ _tea_ _time I mean murder time. Your murder._ "

"Why are you doing this?"

" _Doing what?_ " she yawned.

"Calling. And this address..." Neji shouted, the gun shaking, his world collapsing. "Nothing about makes fucking sense!"

" _My, my..._ _Why are you_ _so groggy and_ _panting?_ _Are you having fun without me?_ "

Neji gulped with difficulty, the last remains of adrenaline fading.

"It's murder time," he breathed out.

" _Ohhh, is it too much to ask to bring me the head?_ "

Neji turned back toward Torune's body. His mind floated, dissolved in the absurdity of the situation. A zombie and him speaking on the phone.

"The head is gone," he said dully, and lowered his phone. She said something, static half-hushed words, yet her laughter resonating high, before he smashed his phone on the pavement next to the cadaver.

His good hand patted Torune's pockets until he found his wallet and car keys.

Neji stepped back, his eyes searching the shadows thickening like fog for another agent.

Nothing moved.

Briskly, Neji spun on his heels and ran. Each step echoed wetly, the bottom of his pants drenched, icy against his ankles, as he left disturbed puddles behind him. He slid at the end of the street, panting heavily, while searching for Torune's car.

He found it in another alley, its black body carved out of assaults, despite the grids and heavy bars of steel crisscrossing it.

His fingers shook, slipped when Neji unlocked it. He started the engine before closing the door after him.

The soft humming of the rain dampened.

His fists whitened around the wheel, his whole body trembling, recoiling, reliving the last moments before he fired. Neji hit the wheel, his lips disappearing into a thin unshakable line. He hit it again. And again. He couldn't stop. His palms stung, blood spattered on the dashboard, but he kept hitting the wheel, more and more violently, anger and loss swirling inside him.

A scream rumbled low, raw, in his throat. It died there.

There was nothing left of him. He was haggard, raw flesh, a destitute man on the run as if he had never truly escaped the wilderness. His cage. The bunker.

Drained, he lowered his forehead on the wheel, his eyes tight shut.

With a shuddering inhale, Neji straightened his back, his bad hand feeling for the gear stick. He didn't have time to linger. He pushed the car into drive, the muscles of his neck tightening, the back of his eyes burning, his hand once more ablaze.

There was only one thought in his head: kill the zombie who had taken everything from him.

 

* * *

 

_Old Taka Estate  
_ _Walled-in city of Konoha_  

The door of the manor was unlocked, the lights cold and flickering, spreading across the walls in a complex web of shadows.

Neji's coat dripped on the naked wood of the stairs in the entrance. His thoughts, his body were bent, stretched out of balance. It was the weariness eating at his marrow. It was the memory of the bunker, at once fusing and separate from the sarcophagus she put him in.

He followed the light, climbing up to the second floor. The staircase creaked, uninviting and ancient, as if this part of the house wasn't normal used. It smelled of dew and the old windows screeched, fickle against the wind and rain tapping heavily onto them.

He walked down the hallway, in soft hesitant steps, holding onto the gun. ' _It could be a trap_ ,' a part of his mind screamed, immediately silent by the other part of him who simply didn't care. He didn't care as sentenced men didn't. He didn't as an executioner inhabited by revenge.

The door at the end of the hallway was half-open.

She sat on an armchair by the unlit fireplace, her legs thrown over the armrest. Her head was bent over a book, her nape exposed, her hair loose, pushed over one shoulder. Her skin gleamed like chalk, powdery and white. The bedroom was spacious, occupied by antique mismatched furniture and a canopy bed.

Her leg slowed then stopped swinging, her shoulders tensed when she sensed him, but she didn't look up from her book.

He pushed the door open wider with the muzzle of his gun resting against the wood.

She looked up at the sharp metallic sound.

Neji raised his arm, the gun aimed toward her head, each of his step heavy.

"How the hell are you always bleeding when we meet?" Tenten sighed, her eyes drifted toward the gun, unsurprised. She snapped her book shut, and slowly stood up. "Did you know you're bleeding over Turkish craftsmanship?" She asked with a levelled voice, and she spread her fingers in front of her, in a non-threatening way, the book slowly pushed against the fireplace.

Mechanically, Neji released the safety of the gun.

Tenten froze, half-lit by the broken chandelier above her, shadows etched deeper in her face. He stepped into the bedroom, towering over her.

"I’m going to bring you to the Office, and get my life back," Neji said quietly.

"Your life back?" Tenten asked curiously, and licked her lips. Her face didn't show the same amusement he had expected from her. "I didn’t turn you in a zombie."

Neji barred his teeth at her, his jaw working, his thoughts spinning.

"They think we’re working together," he said breathlessly, bitterly.

"That’s awfully sweet of them. Tea?"

Tenten gestured toward a fuming tea pot on a low table. Swiftly, she glanced at his wound before her eyes flickered back to his wan face, her hands held up in front of her.

"I could take care of your hand too."

"Shut up!" he shouted, and Tenten flinched back, her face paling. The teapot's cap clicked back into place. Her lips were parted around low quickening breaths, and her eyes never left the gun. "I lost everything because of you." The gun shook violently as he punctuated each word. "Why didn’t you just kill me?"

"My heart is big and fuzzy," she gave him a small worn smile, and her voice sounded like she had rehearsed it.

"Because of you...," he growled letting the words amplify on their own. He readjusted his grip on the gun. "Because of you, I’m reduced to these means."

"You’re right, I’m holding your arm right now, soldier boy. Sooo... tea or no tea?"

"SHUT UP!" Neji roared.

' _What have you done to me?_ ' he screamed inwardly. Nothing made sense anymore.

"I’ve never killed. I eat people, already dead ones. I’ve never thought my life was more important than anyone’s." Tenten finally glanced up at him, their glances reluctantly finding each other. "That gun is shaking so hard, I think you feel the same. Lower it."

They stared at each other, uncomfortable in their frozen pose, yet afraid to break it.

"You should have killed me," he repeated quietly, and she wondered if she had imagined him; his lips had barely moved.

"I didn’t ask to be changed, but I can still decide what kind of monsters I am. One with a big fuzzy heart," Tenten smiled again and it hung empty, worn.

Lost, drifting. That was all he was.

Tenten brushed by him, watching him intently with fake brown eyes.

"You can sleep here. I made the bed for you. Don’t worry," Tenten shrugged. "I won’t crack open your skull again. I’m not hungry right now."

Neji lowered his arm, his wrist jerking as he looked down at the gun until the rest of the room faded. How could this be his destiny? Her, and the wilderness.

"We need to leave right now," he said gruffly.

"The bathroom is behind that door," she pointed at a corner of the room, ignoring him. "There are towels, and possibly something for your hand. If you want more blankets, look in the wardrobe."

"Listen to me!" Neji shouted.

He gripped her arm. Tenten looked up at him, startled, the air knocked out of her from the impulsive touch, the strength of it. Her reaction silenced him. He looked down at his hand on her naked arm. She was lukewarm, half-dead and half-alive. His mouth opened as he tried to remember what he meant to say.

He swallowed.

"Listen to me," Neji repeated more softly, his grip slacking.

"No, you listen to me!" Tenten hissed and shrugged off his hand. "You’ve never caught me, you need to trust me if you want to stay alive."

"Why would you help me?"

"Big fuzzy heart," she repeated slowly, her mouth curling up into a smirk as she pointed at her chest. "Also, I need you to help me escape into the wilderness."

Cocking his head on the side, Neji pinched his lips, then laughed dryly. He ran a hand through his hair, fighting a grimace. The bunker. The sarcophagus. That was where he was headed, the wilderness. If the memories of the bunker possessed his mind, the wilderness possessed everything else about him. It was etched in his skin, scars and atrocities alike. Tattoos buzzing back to life the length of his right arm.

"How do you know about that?" Neji asked finally, and her glance burnt through him, a small smirk curling her lips.

In that expression, he understood that all along someone else had been pulling the strings, and she had been steps ahead of him because someone made sure of she was. He understood that he had been a pawn, and he wondered how much of their twisted destiny had been calculated, laid out on a game board.

"Don't worry about that, soldier boy... Now, get some sleep, and stop sulking, and glaring. It’s very rude of you considering my hospitality."

Tenten turned to go.

"Don’t call me soldier boy."

"Love, then?" she smiled, her voice kept light, but her amusement creased her features, as if she was caught mid-laugh. "Dearest? Which pet name could I call you?"

"Neji."

Tenten looked back at him, one hand over door knob, her head tilted, her head pushing back her hair. A faint smile floated over her red lips, and Neji wondered how, in this moment, she looked warm, beautiful. Human.

Neji averted his eyes. He stretched his hand, the imprint of her skin bittersweet.

"I think you’re a very boring man, Neji," she laughed, the door closing gently after her, and the floor snapped under her weight as she walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated! :D


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